U.S. general in Afghanistan pushes back on sexual abuse reports

Washington Post

Published 1:14 pm, Tuesday, September 22, 2015

KABUL — The top U.S. general in Afghanistan pushed back against recent media reports that U.S. troops were told to ignore suspicions of sexual abuse committed against children by their Afghan allies in past years.

“I personally have served multiple tours of duty in Afghanistan and am absolutely confident that no such theater policy has ever existed here, and certainly, no such policy has existed throughout my tenure as commander,” Gen. John Campbell wrote in a strongly worded statement released Tuesday.

Campbell was responding to a New York Times article chronicling the story of a number of Marines and soldiers who witnessed Afghan soldiers sexually abusing children. Some service members were told to ignore it, while one was kicked out of Afghanistan for intervening.

Capt. Dan Quinn, an Army Special Forces soldier, was relieved of his command and removed from the country after he beat an Afghan militia commander who kept a boy chained to his bed, according to the Times article.

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In the statement, Campbell wrote, “If the abuse involves Afghans, a report shall be forwarded to me through operations channels ... so that the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan can be advised and requested to take action. I have personally spoken with President (Ashraf) Ghani on this issue and he made it clear to me that the Afghan government will not tolerate the abuse of its children.”

Even before the recent reports, however, rampant sexual abuse at the hands of Afghan security forces had been reported extensively in Ben John Anderson’s VICE Media documentary, “This is What Winning Looks Like.” The documentary follows a group of Marines training Afghan security forces in Helmand province in 2012 and chronicles their frustration with their Afghan counterparts’ rampant drug use, corruption and a host of other issues frequently encountered by coalition forces.